Continue reading »]]> /BEGIN RANT

Dear Diary,

Moving is a freaking pain in the ass. It’s less of a pain when five Mexican guys show up at your door, willing to professionally wrap and box every single item in your entire apartment (thanks Rigo, Julio, Gino, Freddy, and Angel). But it’s still a pain in the ass.

That’s your cue to say, “Tell us Brian, why was it such a pain in the ass?”

Glad you asked.

The most annoying thing about moving is all the things that just break/go wrong/make you want to explode like an atom bomb. The things that SHOULD work but don’t.

1. The computers you spend minutes agonizing over making sure you switched to 220 voltage but still won’t turn on (and have you only installation of iTunes) when you plug them in.
2. The things you can’t buy because the stupid retail system in the UK is wired to do a credit check for every 10-pound data plan and for some reason yours fails every time.
3. The banks that don’t let you sign up a joint account unless both of you are working (yes, I’m looking at you Barclays).
4. The iPad data plan (that you have to use Pay-As-You-Go because you failed the credit check) that won’t work because you have to connect your iPad to your iTunes (which you can’t do because your stupid computer [which you air shipped over the ocean] won’t turn on.

And hanging over our heads through all of this is the fact that my work visa, which was good for 3 years, expires in one month and I have to go through a 50-page application, and so does Robyn, to renew it. The 50-page application isn’t the real problem. The real problem is ridiculous requirements like: “You must show us 12 months of bank statements showing how rich you are and the logo of the bank must be on EVERY page of each statement.” Sorry, but Bank of America, retards that they are, only print their logo on the first page. What am I supposed to do about that?

Equally frustrating is trying to arrange for someone to move into our apartment from overseas, and having to deal with the building’s management company, who insist on paperwork that we simply cannot get the bank to provide. Yes, I know I signed a paper saying I would get the bank to state that I can sublet without breaking any clause in my mortgage, and after six calls to customer service they all agree: “We don’t have any problem, there’s nothing in your note that says you can’t sublet, but we don’t have an official communication that says this and we can only give out official communications.”

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I keep telling myself, “woooosaah, woooosah,” and I keep telling Robyn, “Don’t worry, I’m sure they will accept all this paperwork.” But honestly, this has been the most annoying move I have ever done. Even the move to the Netherlands was not as difficult as this, and there every government form was in a foreing language.

Also adding to my annoyance is the fact I let the sales woman at Joseph A Banks talk me into the wrong suit size and now my suit is going to cost almost 200 dollars in alterations to get it to fit correctly, which is almost as much as it cost to buy, thanks to the expensive London skilled labor that I am going to have to hire to basically cut it into an entirely different suit.

AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH

The only thing that has helped through all this is that Robyn has been a fantastic partner. She has used her time to sign up all our utilities, make appointments with banks, go shopping for home wares, buy food (from the tiny “express” supermarkets that are near us), and generally be an awesome force for calm and stability in my life.

Thank you baby.

/END OF RANT

Continue reading »]]> So I was looking for a good FPS to transport me into a fantasy realm where I am powerful and use my superpowers (and many many guns) to kill bad guys, and I saw the TV ads for Crysis 2 and thought “perfect”.

However, when I started playing I learned that you quickly die in the initial stages if you don’t master the stealth aspect of the game. Which is bad for me. I’ve never been one for stealth games. I tried almost every installment of the Metal Gear franchise unsuccessfully, which annoyed me. I hate sucking at things.

But I stuck with it and finally the game added “armor mode” which allowed me to just plow through guys. But then a strange thing happened. Once I mastered the stealth aspect I loved it. I loved sneaking up on unaware CELL troops, stabbing them through their throats, remaining cloaked, then running for cover to recharge my stealth energy.

Overall the game has very nice graphics, good game mechanics, an extremely average but well-executed storyline, visually interesting levels that keep you entertained enough not to care too much that pretty much the whole game is the same thing. There are a few vechicle driving missions, but they are short and you can actually get by without actually driving the vehicles if you don’t want.

I have to say, one of the catchiest parts of the game is the theme music, which for some reason is just haunting and since I hear it every time I turn on or off the game, I can’t escape humming it repeatedly when I finally have had enough mindless violence and decide to quit for the evening.

Overall, I recommend it.

Continue reading »]]> This movie rocked! It was like a two-hour long chase scene starting in the wilderness of some Scandinavian-looking country, through the deserts of Morocco, then finally into Germany. The girl who plays Hanna does an awesome job of being both likable and giving off that “I’ve been living in a shack in the woods being trained by my ex-spy Dad all my life” kind of vibe. It’s nice to have a female baddie with some good acting chops (although Cate Blanchett’s Southern accent is a little overdone), Eric Bana is the man and gets a few good fight scenes in, and overall the movie keeps the tempo up the entire time.

I thought the ending was a bit anti-climactic but perfectly in keeping with the plot and tone of the story. I loved this movie and would recommend it to anyone.

Continue reading »]]> So yesterday we stopped snowboarding a bit early and, after Darien brought Joanneke back from getting her new cast (turns out her leg is broken), we went to the brand spanking new “Tauren Spa“.

Now, I’m no connoisseur of European spas, so I have no frame of reference, but I had a pretty strong suspicion that there was going to be some nakedness involved. And I was also pretty sure that Robyn was not going to be cool with that. Turns out, peer pressure works really well. And once the fateful moment passed where we had to hang our towels up on the rack and enter the sauna, wearing nothing but our birthday suits, all barriers were removed.

The sauna, like most European nude beaches, was populated mostly by old dudes, and old fat chicks, but there was a funny moment when we entered one of the dry saunas (there were like five different varieties of sauna rooms to be had) which was occupied by three naked Dutch chicks, who didn’t know that we had two Dutch speakers with us. After they left, Margreet told us they were talking about us, saying that we seemed uncomfortable and that it was probably our first time. Well, they were right about at least half of that!

In any case, walking around naked is an exercise in constant self-reinforcement, but SWIMMING naked is pretty damn fun. Especially when you go in the heated pool outside and watch the sun go down behind the snow-capped mountains.

My main gripe with the place wasn’t the enforced nudity, but that we went there to get some relaxation for our sore muscles and they did not have a hot tub. Not one jacuzzi. In the whole damn place. What the hell kind of brand new spa, whose clientele are mainly sore skiers and snowboarders, doesn’t have a hot tub!